The cyclical nature of this business, those of us that don't have very short memories know that "hiring for the foreseeable future" never turns out to be true

 

http://youtu.be/g-kiZwF_qJo

 

I can tell you that United is extremely short staffed. I can't speak for Delta and American, but I'd expect American to get very short very soon. And now that there are retirements, the majors need to fill their training pipelines. Those training pipelines are currently empty. I'd ballpark the training pipeline for United, American, and Delta at 500 per airline.

Yes, the industry is extremely cyclical. But right now airlines are running very lean and not adding capacity. We're on the upside of the cycle, not the downside.

Unless you think that the economy is about to collapse and/or the retirement age is about to be raised again, it's probably fairly safe to say that the hiring will last for at least the next three years. ... I say three years because I don't see any economic collapse or age change before that timeframe.

I think what you're going to see over the next few years is the opposite of what has happened over the last decade. The regionals will shrink and the majors will need to grow to fill those routes that used to be flown by the regionals. It won't be a 1:1 ratio; you'll see one 737 flight replace two RJ flights.
Even with attrition at the regionals, there will likely be stagnation there due to the regionals shrinking because there will be so few qualified newhires that the regionals will hire because they won't be competitive.

 

Actually, the numbers are minuscule and not representative of a significant group. Check them here before you believe that 767 Captain that told you over drinks that 42,000 pilots are retiring in the next year from Delta, and only 204 commercial certificates were issued last year.

 

That was in every healthy sector in the world. Growth meant that new people had to be hired. That doesn't mean there were mass shortages, that just meant that the correct people were in the correct positions and moving on from 15K dollar jobs when they were supposed to.

 

You are totally right. This is what everyone is missing. I hear it all the time where people compare these hiring booms in the past to the supposed up and coming one. The big difference is that the regionals are shrinking and the majors are just letting most of it go. There is NO more growth.

Sure the majors talk about getting new jets but they don't tell you about all of the aircraft they are retiring. No new routes. Not many at least. I haven't been doing this flying thing for very long but to this day I see a lot less frequencies and city pairings than I used to.

Retirement attrition alone is not going to cause any abnormal hiring boom. Maybe retirement attrition and people realizing it's stupid to invest hundreds of thousands of dollars to realistically only get paid around $15/hr for the first 15 years of your career will make a difference. But the numbers right now don't show me anything promising.

 

Current RJ captains will get picked up by the majors. FO's will bounce around from regional to regional with very few upgrades because the regionals won't be able to hire. They remaining regional lifers will take all the captain spots. FO's will be stuck making $37/hr until their company shuts down due to inability to staff their operation, then they'll be on the street with no TPIC time an no job prospects.

There will never be a shortage of pilots for majors, legacies and LLC airlines.

 

This. 100% this. I am already living it. Comair for many years. Never upgraded. Gojet for almost a year now. No upgrade in sight even at this hole.